Date

Breadcrumb

paying for content

Among trends in the media industry, one of the most promising is the increasing readiness of consumers to pay for content, says Marcel Fenez, a Global Entertainment and Media Leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a presentation of many of those trends.

Mr Fenez made his presentation at WAN-IFRA's Publish Asia 2011, being held in Bangkok from 27 to 29 April.

"They are giving us hints about what they want to pay for," he says.

"They're telling us three things - I will pay for convenience, I will obviously pay for quality, because one of the things we know about free content is that very often the quality is not very high, and they're also telling us they'll pay for a higher quality experience," Mr Fenez says.

Regarding the last point, Mr Fenez used the example of someone paying a high price to go to a concert yet illegally downloading music from the internet. "Why will people pay $150 to go to a gig but not pay for music? What they tell us is, it's the enriched experience. Content alone is not enough, it has to be more than that.

"Though content is king, we have to rely on more than just content," he says. "We have to provide convenience, we have to provide quality, and we have to provide the experience."

Tags

Author

Date

You can get the whole paper, now sometimes including digital access. We'll sell you Sunday only, or the weekend, or 7-day, but you have to take our whole paper. That's what we sell; that's our one-size-fits-all product. It fit your grandparents and your parents, so why shouldn't it fit you?

Tags

Author

Date

The recent launch of The New York Times paywall has prompted debates about the viability and fairness of paying for news online. Are publications unrealistic about subscription prices? Should the community rally to support journalism? Is it worth paying for?

But the biggest question that lingers in an everyday web reader's mind is much simpler: "Will clicking on this link bring me to a story?"

Tags

Author

Date

A Texas newspaper organization offers free online content, including breaking news and obituaries, and requires paid subscriptions for access to more in depth work. Four months in, editor Carlos Sanchez says it's too soon to pinpoint trends but so far the company has seen a drop in Web traffic and an increase in print subscriptions. Public reaction has been evenly mixed between approving and critical, Sanchez says.

Tags

Author

Date

When the iPad was launched last year, much was made of how it would revolutionize video and other media consumption. But new research may not spell good news for all those companies hoping to profit from that kind of use.

Apparently, current iPad owners are proving to be a little stingy when it comes to paying for content like TV shows and magazines.

Tags

Author

Date

While newspapers around the world are anxiously asking themselves what would happen if they started charging readers to view articles online, a few answers have started to emerge.

Steven Brill's Journalism Online experiment, which developed a system that allows newspapers to charge their most regular online visitors, has analyzed its preliminary data and found on average that advertising revenue and overall traffic did not decline significantly despite predictions otherwise.

Tags

Author

Date

Only two percent of readers in the UK would be willing to pay for a website that it is currently free and 79 percent would go elsewhere, according to KPMG's Media and Entertainment Barometer study, Press Gazette reported yesterday.

The research, based on three YouGov surveys, also showed that nine percent of those who are not currently subscribe to a website would be willing to do so in the next year, paidContent.org informed.

Only 13 percent said they have paid for content online and it mostly includes music (23 percent) and online gaming (21 percent), Journalism.co.uk pointed out. Media--newspapers, news analysis, magazines and TV--represent 19 percent.

Furthermore, the study found that 86 percent of British "preferred to consume media offline rather than online. The most popular reason was a preference to reading physical copies," paidContent.org reported.

Tags

Author

Date

The most popular newspaper in the UK, the Daily Telegraph, said it has not yet decided whether to install a paywall, Reuters reported.

"Absolutely no decisions have been made on the introduction of a paid-content model," publisher Telegraph Media Group explained in an e-mail. "Like all publishers, TMG continually evaluates the developments in the digital sector."

On Tuesday, The Financial Times published an article in which an anonymous source said the newspaper was going to start charging for content next year. "It will be a metered system or, less likely, micropayments," said the insider, pointing out that it would not follow the paywall model used by Rupert Murdoch's The Times and News of The World.

According to The Guardian, the The Telegraph is more interested in the pay system that The New York Times is expected to launch in 2011, which that gives users some articles for free.

Tags

Author

Date

Russian business daily Vedomosti may be following in Rupert Murdoch's footsteps, suggested journalist Sergei Skripnikov via Twitter, WebPlanet.ru reported today. As of November 1, free contents of the title's online edition will include articles from sections like "Career and Management," "Culture" and "Opinions" as well as headlines and announcements. Readers would have to pay a fee to access to archives and full versions of some articles, Media Day wrote.

According to Editor-in-Chief Viktor Saxon's blog, Vedomosti is curretly holding a special promotion package for its Web readers, entailing full access to new issues and archives, a smartphone-friendly version, a mobile edition, widgets and other features. The package costs RUB 450 (US$ 14.38) per year, provided that users register until October 15. Afterwards, the paper goes back to its usual RUB 3398.40 (US$ 108.70) subscription price tag.

Vedomosti was started as a collaboration between newspapers The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times as well Russian publishing giant Independent Media in 1999. The website states that in addition to journalists across Moscow and the rest of Russia, there is occassional input from WSJ and FT. Its mission is to "inform readers on a daily basis about the most important economic, political, financial and corporate events, offering an in-depth analysis and forecasts," says the site's About Us section.